Design of chitosan-alginate core-shell nanoparticules loaded with anacardic acid and cardol for drug delivery

Anacardic Acid (AA) and Cardol (CD) are the main constituents of the cashew nut shell liquid, which presented several biological activities. In this study, a 2(3) factorial experimental design was employed in order to evaluate the influence of the reaction conditions in the nanoencapsulation of AA and CD using Chitosan (CH), Alginate (ALG) and Arabic Gum matrices. The nanoparticles (NPs) with higher stability and encapsulation efficiency were those with ALG as an outer coating and with lower content of surfactant. The NPs presented nanometric size with 90% of the distribution ranging from 70 to 250 nm. The in vitro kinetics revealed that CH-ALG/AA and CH-ALG/CD NPs followed zero-order kinetics model, showing a significantly slow release rate, with values of 33% and 63%, respectively, after 240h. Particularly, CH-ALG/CD NPs presented higher inhibitory capacity for all strains of dermatophytes due to their release rate, with promising results for antimicrobial control.